Perhaps that last part is somewhat sensationalist, but SEGA has streamlined its US and EUROPE divisions, leading to a shit-ton of layoffs and all but four franchises disappearing from SEGA's to-do list.

These four franchises are Safe. -- Sonic the Hedgehog, Football Manager, Total War and Aliens

All others, including my beloved Super Monkey Ball, are being forgotten and cancelled... a bummer for some of us, like fans of Shenmue and such. However these franchises could make their way to other publishers and developers I suppose. I didn't read anything that said that couldn't happen.

What does it even mean to say a franchise is "dead" though? Every franchise is dead, until someone decides to make a new game in it. I mean, I absolutely guarantee that we will see another Super Monkey Ball game at some point in the future. Maybe just not right away.

Considering that much of what Sega does anymore isn't all that I hope it to be (at least where Nintendo platforms are concerned), this news affects me not. Sure, I'd love to see a new Ecco the Dolphin, but I know it would never happen anyway, and if it did, they'd flub it up somehow. Other franchises such as NiGHTS, Panzer Dragoon, and ToeJam & Earl would be neat to have new installments of, but as with Ecco, I don't think such would ever come to fruition anyway. Hopefully, though, this restructuring allows them to place more attention on getting Sonic right. Sonic Colors was a good start, but the 2D remake? Not so much.

Hmmm, what in the hell is Football Manager & Total War?! Seriously, these are games? They sound like a menu option. So, its basically Sonic and Aliens, huh? Sounds like Sega is about to go completely out of the videogame business. Are they honestly sucking that badly?

I do feel bad for the people that is getting affected. Now that I think about it, the last Sega game I bought was Sonic Secret of the Rings. I did own the Super Monkey Ball games on the gamecube, at least the first two. I have not bought any since then.

Not that Im an expert, but with the 4 titles listed and 2 of them I've never heard of before, it seems like Sega is going to have a hard time staying in the game. I can't believe they are not even making money off the monkey ball games.

Even though I don't buy hardly any of Sega's games, it just seems bad for the overall videogame industry when stuff like this happens. Well, maybe some other publishers will pick up some of the bigger titles not on that list, like the monkey ball games and maybe be able to do something to make those games more successful and keep the fans of those games happy.

They didn't make enough money on the Mario and Sonic games? Combined they sold over ten million and were pretty cheap to make, so I'd think that'd be plenty of profit coming in to support losses on other games.